Study On Residents' Environmental Behavior And Its Influencing Factors

With the accelerated development of industrialization and human's overexploitationand overspending on environment and resources, ecological issues has become the mostserious restriction and threat to human's survival and development. It decides on developingtendency of the future that whether human can change his attitude and behavior to theenvironment, rebuild harmonious relationship between human and the nature.With residents as the study subject, in the dissertation, the researcher examines thecharacteristics of residents' environmental behavior, its significant influencing factors, therelationship between environmental behavior and its influencing factors and based on theanalysis, constructs a residents' environmental behavior model. The results of the studyprovide helpful instruction for understanding Chinese residents' environmental behavior,making environmental policies related to promoting residents' environmental behavior andplanning scientific environmental education system.First, aiming at single study view, unclear concepts and with the background of dailylife of western residents in previous studies, based on systematical and thorough literaturereview, specialists and the residents interviews, the researcher clearly defines the researchvariables from the aspects of content and operational conception: classifies environmentalbehavior of Chinese residents into four dimensions of eco-management, consumerism,persuasion and civic behavior; confirms six dominant determinants of environmentalbehavior, which are environmental attitudes(including environmental belief, environmentalsensitivity and environmental Value), characteristics, environmental knowledge, situationalfactors and social demographic variables. Based on these analysis, a scale is developed,which is suitable for measuring residents' environmental behavior and its influencingfactors. The reliability and validity of the scale are certified by empirical study.Second, the study integrates two research views of social psychology andenvironmental education, and constructs and validates an integrated model fordemonstrating the relation of four categories of environmental behavior and theirdeterminants. The investigation with sample of Dalian residents shows that, Chineseresidents have a general low level environmental behavior, and the levels of four categoriesof environmental behavior decline in the order of eco-management, consumerism,persuasion and civic behavior; environmental knowledge and life experience have strongerpower of predicting environmental behavior than psychological variables; Chinese residentsgenerally look on environmentalbehavior as kind of social altruistic behavior, andenvironmental behavior closely relates with sense of morality and responsibility and social norms, while not based on positive environmental beliefs. The results also find out that,environmental knowledge and life experience also have impact on environmental behaviorindirectly through the impact on environmental attitudes. This result contributes to thediscussion on precursors of environmental attitudes in the literature, and provides powerfulfoundation for spreading and improving environmental education in China.Finally, in the dissertation, a hypothesis is presented and certified, that situationalfactors have moderating effects on the relation of environmental attitudes and behaviors.The result shows, when more people participate, more opportunities and channels areprovided, and with the requirement and restriction of environmental laws and regulations,positive environmental attitudes will have a stronger impact on environmental behavior.whereas, the impact will be weaker.The study generally ushers the situation of Chinese residents' environmental behavior,provides a set of analyzing tools and theoretical basis to find out and improve the keyfactors and path of environmental behavior, make suitable environmental policies.